Ramli
Ibrahim is the dynamic force in Malaysian theatre and possesses open-mindedness
for both the Old and the New. Trained in classical ballet, modern
dance and Indian classical dance, Ramli is a creator and a visionary in
the arts who sees unity within the diversity of all of Sutra's artistic
endeavors. In Malaysia, Ramli is acclaimed as a pioneer dancer and
choreographer of international standing in the major fields of dance that
he has mastered - Bharatanatyam, Odissi as well as Contemporary Dance.

As
a teacher of Bharata Natyam and Odissi, he has groomed some of the finest
dancers to have emerged from Malaysia and at the same time placed Indian
classical dance in the context of the Malaysian experience. Ramli studied
Bharatanatyam under Adyar K Lakshman and Odissi under the late Guru Deba
Prasad Das. As Artistic Director of Sutra Dance Theatre, which he
started in 1983, Ramli Ibrahim has always envisioned his creativity as
a total experience, one that transcends national boundaries. He has created
more than 40 original dance repertoires in the traditional and contemporary
idioms. For Ramli, theatre is the all-encompassing universal vehicle for
his creative vision: it expresses life itself in the richness of all its
myths and rituals.

What made
you take up dance as a career?
There
is no particular point in time that I can refer to. It was always there
in me. Even as a 3-year-old, I used to like to dance. I used to dance in
the fields instead of walking..it was innate in me. I guess, even then
there was the 'entertainer' in me. I'm a qualified mechanical engineer
but I pursued dance alongside my academic activities. I learnt Malay folk
dances and ballet and have performed with the Sydney Dance Company in Australia,
New York, London and Europe. I learnt Bharatanatyam from Adyar K Lakshman
and used to perform Indian classical dance under the name of Ramachandra!
But when I saw the Odissi dance, I told myself, “Wow! This is an absolutely
wonderful dance form”. My attraction towards Odissi as against the
structured, too steeped in tradition Bharatanatyam prompted me to go to
Puri and learn from a disciple of Guru Deba Prasad Das. But I soon found
that I was not learning what I wanted to and became a direct student of
Guru Deba Prasad Das.

Coming
from a conservative society, were there any obstacles to your taking up
dance as a career?
Fortunately
for me, not very many go to the theater in Malaysia. The question of a
Muslim doing a temple dance is not relevant. Time has passed and we have
to get on with the artistic aspect and not the seemingly controversial
aspect. I was part of the avante - garde work in Australia where the body
is perceived as beautiful and I've been instrumental in bringing that feeling
in Malaysia.

What
were your idols and guiding forces during the early stages of your career?
Picasso,
Japanese poetry, books on myths and mysticism, works of Carl Gustav Jung,
….. I always ask people whom I have high regards in their fields to recommend
me the 5 best books to read.

What
are the cherished memories of your guru Deba Prasad Das?
The
intense guru-shishya relationship that Gajendra Kumar Panda had with Guru
Deba Prasad Das inspired me to write 'Adorations' which culminated in many
performances. Deba Prasad was a very intense person. His passionate character
made him later on very controversial and difficult to get along with. He
was the youngest of the 3 gurus to revive Odissi. Though he was very
much traditional, he was part of the Jayantika, which was the revivalist
group. But he pulled out of it later on as he disagreed with some of the
new innovations that were made by the Jayantika. Deba Prasad used
to do all kinds of stuff. He believed that in classical, the folk and tribal
must also come out or else the classical work will be like white sugar…looks
good but has no value.

How
tough was it for your dance company 'Sutra' to attain the sort of recognition
and patronage that is so essential for the advancement of the arts?
Financially,
my company Sutra has been totally unsupported since the beginning. It has
taken years of hard work to bring Sutra to its current status. Now, no
one can ignore us, as we have achieved recognition in Malaysia and abroad.

Ramli Ibrahim &
Rathimala in 'Pallavi'

You
are trained in classical, folk and contemporary dance styles. How do you
strike a balance between them?
We
learn various art forms and perform them as per our choreography. It is
the critics who attempt to compartmentalise and put our style of presentation
into various slots. In some items, the music may be Odissi like in 'Pallavi',
but I have deconstructed it and given it a contemporary layering. We can
define contemporary aesthetic now from an Asian point of view and not from
a Euro - American stance.

What
is your focus now at this stage of your career?
Choreography
is and always will be my main focus. In the many beautiful Odissi dance
items, I find scope to exercise my own choreographic interpretations unlike
the structured Bharatanatyam items. All my Odissi productions are commissioned
works. My contemporary choreography is influenced for instance by the performing
arts genre like Makyong and Menora, Malay martial art form of Silat, besides
Indian classical dance idioms. I am involved in a lot of networking and
cross-genre work as I travel a lot and meet many artistes from different
countries. The dance items that pertain to Sakuhachi reflect the meditative
quality of music. In 'Mukaiji Reibo', a zen monk is on a punt adrift
on a misty sea. He hears the mellow tones of a flute, played by Sakuhachi
flautist Christopher Blasdel, and is drawn towards it. The story is of
Japanese Buddhist origin but I take the point of embarkation from the divine
flute player, which is Krishna himself.

Ramli
Ibrahim & Christopher Blasdel in 'Mukaiji Reibo'

How would
you describe some of your innovative productions?
To
make new rules or break them in order to do something new, you have to
know your stuff. The balance happens then. In contemporary work, you are
the sum total of your experience. If you want to express something, what
comes out then, modern, classical or folk have to come out. Then you have
achieved the challenge of choreography. Or else the audience will see through
it. In this, you have to trust the intelligence of the rasikas and critics.
The choreographer does what he is supposed to do. He creates the
work. He's not going to categorize it. He'll just go ahead and create.
Let the critics categorize it. But a critic has to be compassionate. An
artiste's graph will not go up all the way all the time. That's when I
realize critics and audience are cruel to performers sometimes.

You
participated recently in 'The Other Festival' in Chennai. What is your
opinion about such festivals?
The
Chennai Festival, meaning the December season, is very valid. You should
be proud of this festival. But it has to look into the future and attract
new people. The dance should express the contemporary environment. That's
why 'The Other Festival' is so exciting. I'm excited to explore this part
of South Asia as South Asian dance is crossing boundaries all over the
world. 'The Other Festival' is the festival to explore ultimate creativity.
Like Dionysus, the God of wine, it should be intoxicating, creative and
chaotic, and not showcase only the permissible, trite and post popular.

Given
the complicated movements and demands on the body, fitness is very important
to a dancer.
Yes,
fitness is very important to a dancer. Not that a slightly heavier built
person does not make a good dancer! For instance, Balasaraswathi did not
possess a great figure but she was an inspired dancer. So it did not matter
if she was thin or fat. She was an icon. As the person ages, the body rebels
against certain movements. Yet, Kelucharan Mohapatra has achieved the impossible…to
have become better as he's grown older. He probably performs much better
now than in his younger days. Even his physique is more interesting now
and he glows. Although being fit is important, mind over matter is important
too. Certain people have transcended the physical. So it's not true that
as you grow older, your dance suffers. Some of the things that impress
us are not virtuousic but give us a glimpse of truth and beauty that transcends
the physical. And we find that in Bala and Kelucharan Mohapatra. Leela
Venkatraman and I observed the same glow in Leela Samson. Beautiful as
she already is, she has now reached that stage and she's positively radiant.
Fitness is always important but, how do you call Bala as fit? Some of the
old dancers of Bali, the Kudiyattam dancers of Kerala, the old living national
treasures, are not fit in the youthful sense, but they have transcended
the physical, understood the essence of art…. they have given us a glimpse
of the wonderful in art. In the west, once a dancer grows older, he / she
looks the age because of their strenuous movements. Maybe Asian art does
not concentrate on the body so much. Fitness is important, but not
most important. At its highest level, art transcends mere physical fitness.

How
do you keep yourself fit? What advice do you give your dancers on fitness?
I
dance all the time, I do yoga in the morning. I am moderate with my food.
No overindulgence in food. I guess that keeps me generally fit. One
of the things to keep myself relatively free from dance injuries is the
good habit of warming up and preparing myself physically before a performance.
I get livid if my dancers do not warm up. But people like Bala did not
work out. Maybe their work then was not that strenuous. Eras change
and an era reflects the society of the time. Time then was slower, life
was slower. But now, if dancers do not take care of themselves, they will
pay for it later. Problems in knees, ankles, hamstring, tummies…those who
are interested in life, take care of themselves, or the Muse, your 'shri'
will leave you.

What
book are you working on at present?
For
more than 9 years, I'm working on a book called MOVING BEINGS. I was awarded
the Fulbright Distinguished Artiste in Malaysia in 1999. The thrust of
the award is towards researching Malay shamanism. 'Main Petri' and 'Makyong'
are 2 Malay traditional performing arts genre that also touch on shamanism
and performance healing. Surprisingly, a lot of the archival material on
it is not in Malaysia but abroad.

Have
you ever been overwhelmed by anything in your dance career?
I'm
overwhelmed by youth…the boundless energy….

What's
your birth date?
20th
May.

What
do you do for relaxation?
I
do a lot of things. I love to work in the garden. I cook. I paint. I have
2 dogs and 2 cats. I like to nurture things. I'm a nurturer. And I love
teaching. I think I make a very good teacher. I sometimes see maybe a not
so very good-looking dancer, maybe a not that graceful body, but I can
spot his / her latent talent waiting to be extracted, to express itself…I
want to nurture that talent. We have recently decorated the Sutra premises
with some extraordinary furniture. Our technical director Sivarajah Natarajan
and I collected blocks of old timbers around and we were stimulated to
create furniture with original designs as we perceived it in those timber
pieces and we now have some exquisite furniture.

You
say you love teaching. What kind of a guru are you?
I
don't like people diving at my feet! Whatever you do, you must start with
a pure inner heart, not just an outward ritualistic show. When it comes
to a performance or class, it they don't come up to expectations or make
me wait, they get hell from me. That's the guru in me. If you do not have
respect for your art or for your parents' money, why are you wasting my
time and yours? That's why we have performed very few arangetrams. We do
not recommend arangetrams unless the student is serious about making dance
a very important part of his / her life. Otherwise, it has no relevance.
For a lot of students, arangetram is the beginning of an end. Most of them
start a kitchen class. Too many mediocre teachers and dancers around. Over
popularizing Bharatanatyam has resulted in this.